


The Good Lannister

by icarus_chained



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, Awkward Conversations, Developing Friendships, Future Fic, Gen, Hurt, Kinslaying, Patricide, Post-Season/Series 07 Finale, Survival, of a sort, warring families
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-09-19
Packaged: 2018-12-31 16:31:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12136518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: Post-Season 7, Tyrion Lannister and Arya Stark meet at Winterfell. Or, to put it another way, Tywin Lannister's cupbearer and his killer finally have a conversation.





	The Good Lannister

**Author's Note:**

> An odd little bit of a thing. I'll admit I'm curious about these two and how they'll react to each other.

When Tyrion opened the door to his chambers, it was to find Arya Stark standing beside his desk and leafing idly through his papers. Well. _Apparently_ idly, anyway. There was a certain amount of poise and deliberation to everything the girl -the young woman- did these days. Tyrion supposed that being hunted across the known world and keeping company with killers would do that to a person. If they had the skill to survive it.

Apparently, if there was one thing the remaining Starks had in abundance, it was skill.

She didn't startle at the sound of the door, either. She didn't spin or drop papers or look guilty. She simply turned, smooth and calm as you please, and offered him a tiny smile of greeting. The expression made him think of knives, for no particularly solid reason.

"Lord Tyrion," she said, with that tiny smile. "I was hoping to talk to you, if you had a moment." She glanced briefly at his desk, and back at him, her eyebrows lifting slightly in easy, placid challenge. "I hope you don't mind me waiting."

Tyrion considered that for a moment. And then he turned around, and silently pushed the door closed behind him, pointedly not dropping the latch. He turned back to her, and held out one hand towards the lone chair beside his desk.

"Not at all, my lady," he said, with a smile of his own. "What can I do for you?"

She grinned at him, slick and sly, and dropped herself casually onto his bed instead. Though she was careful, he noted, to angle her swordsheath so as not to punch a hole in his bedding. Well then. That was both pointed and oddly considerate, wasn't it? Shrugging, Tyrion moved to the chair himself, and clambered into it with an equally distinct and pointed lack of grace. Two could play at this game. Whatever this game turned out to be.

Needle, hadn't she named that sword? Jon had said something about that. It certainly suited her. A better prodder and pricker he'd rarely seen.

"What was it you wanted to talk about?" he asked, after a long moment in which she seemed perfectly content to let the silence stretch and stifle. His hands busied themselves automatically with the wine on his desk. "I am many things, my lady, but I'm not a mind reader. I'm afraid you will have to help me a little here."

He held out one of the cups to cap the request, and something flickered oddly in her expression. Humour, he wondered? Bitterness? She took the cup with the strangest smile.

"I wanted to meet you," she said, her eyes flicking up from the dark depths of the wine to meet his. It was curiosity he saw in them, and something else. That odd smile still curved her lips. "I wanted to ask you about a lot of things. I'm curious about you, Lord Tyrion. The Imp. The Good Lannister. The man who married my sister and didn't rape her. The man who did his best to keep her safe, when his own family wanted to hurt her."

Tyrion winced, and took a hasty gulp of wine. Arya's smile twisted, and she took a drink herself, saluting him bitterly with the cup. Tyrion was fiercely tempted to drain his. The Good Lannister, she said. Was that what he was now? Gods, now _there_ was a joke.

"You do seem to have an odd affinity for us Starks," she went on, watching him as he refilled his cup. "You helped Jon when he went to the Wall, helped him again with the dragonglass. You gave Bran a saddle when he was crippled. You tried to keep Sansa safe in King's Landing. You seem very fond of us, my lord. For a man with your name."

It wasn't a compliment, or a thanks either. It was a needle, a challenge. A blade offered smoothly, her eyes calm and curious behind it. You seem very fond of us, for a Lannister. You seem very fond of us, for an enemy.

And she had a point, too. Tyrion snorted at it, raised his cup in wry acknowledgement.

"I have an affinity, as you put it, for cripples, bastards and broken things," he said, echoing a sentiment he'd once offered her murdered brother. The _strong_ brother. The trueborn heir, strong and proud. There was maybe a lesson in there somewhere. The nasty sort, like every other lesson he'd wound up learning. Save, perhaps, for one. "You could call it fellow-feeling, I suppose. Life tends to be unkind to people like us, the ones at a general disadvantage. I suppose I thought we should take it upon ourselves to be kind to each other, when the opportunities present themselves."

For all the good it wound up doing. For all the help those tiny things turned out to be. A saddle, for a boy who would become a seer, fixed helpless in the flow of time. A few words of advice and a gesture they'd both known to be a sop, for a boy and a king about to face the annihilation of his people. The odd word of kindness and a pathetic show of restraint, for a woman who'd now endured every possible horror and then some. Oh yes. Such opportunities to be of help he'd had. Such a good man, for a _Lannister_. 

Oh, to be damned with such faint praise. And rightfully so.

Yet she didn't laugh at him. She didn't sneer. She only watched him instead, sitting idly on his bed, studying him with appraising eyes. The still, cool calm of a killer, watching her prey. Tyrion had a great deal of experience with that. He'd seen killers aplenty on his various travels. For poise alone, Arya Stark was now easily in the top ten.

"I met your father, you know," she said. Abruptly. Out of nowhere. Tyrion blinked stupidly at her. She leaned forwards, resting her elbows on her knees, her cup of wine playing idly between her fingers. Her eyes were dark on his. "I served under him at Harrenhal. He didn't know it was me, obviously. He'd have killed me if he had. He thought I was the captured daughter of a stonemason. I was clever, and he liked me. He put me to work as his cupbearer."

That ... Tyrion had no idea where they were going with that. It did explain her odd expression at the cup of wine, though. He got that now. A pitch-black little slice of humour indeed.

"I learned a lot about him in that time," Arya continued, eyeing him thoughtfully. "He was trying to kill my brother. I wanted to kill him. I wasn't good enough yet. I didn't get the chance. So I learned about him instead. He was a very cold man. He wasn't kind at all."

"... No, he wasn't," Tyrion agreed, and drained off his second cup without another word. He moved to fill it a third time. She didn't stop him. His queen would have. Her sister, even, might have. Arya Stark only watched him, with those ever-placid eyes.

"Did you kill him for that?" she asked, and Tyrion froze. Put down the jug, carefully, and the cup along with it. He didn't look at her. She never took her eyes from him. "It was you, wasn't it. When you fled King's Landing. You killed your father. You killed Tywin Lannister."

It wasn't a question. Both of them knew it. 

"Yes," Tyrion managed at last. Turning back to face her, this clever young woman with a killer's eyes. This battered Stark, come back from the dead like all her family. "I killed him. Shot him, actually. There was a crossbow on his wall. They don't let condemned men have weapons. I had to make do with what was to hand."

He said it lightly. As lightly as he could. As much of a joke. She didn't laugh. There was something in her eyes that might almost have looked like pity.

"It wasn't because he wasn't kind," Tyrion went on. Wondering, even as he did it, _why_ he was doing it. He hadn't given anyone this answer. Not even his queen, and she had asked for it. He didn't know why he was telling Arya Stark, of all people. 

Maybe just because she was a killer. Maybe because she'd wanted to kill his father too.

"He wanted me dead," he whispered finally. "He's always wanted me dead. He's had that in common with my sister for as long as I've known them. He told me so. If I hadn't had his name, if I hadn't been a Lannister, he'd have walked me into the sea at birth and let it wash me away. He knew I didn't kill Joffery. He knew it wasn't me or Sansa. He didn't care. He finally had a chance to get rid of me, and he took it. And I ... I guess, in the end, I took it back."

Self-defense. When it came down to it, just self-defense. Kinslaying was a Lannister family hobby. In the end he'd just been better at it.

Arya watched him patiently. He envied her that poise, he really did. She was as still and as calm as a winter pond, while he fractured apart in front of her. Fitting enough, he supposed. He wasn't her friend. The Good Lannister, but still a Lannister. An ally, now, in the service of the Dragon Queen, but not a friend. A few kind gestures to her splintered family would never be enough to earn that.

"... He said his father was kind," she quietly, after a long moment. "I asked him once. We were talking about fathers. I said mine had died from loyalty, and asked him if he'd known his. He said he was a good man. And a weak one, whose weakness almost destroyed his house." She paused, and smiled wryly. "I doubt your father ever had much use for kindness, Lord Tyrion. And my sister tells me you were always that."

Tyrion stared at her. Helplessly, blankly. She stood quietly from his bed. Put her goblet down gently beside his. She rested her hand on the hilt of her sword, and looked at him almost kindly.

"I wanted to kill your father," she said softly. "He was always on my list. But you were his son. I suppose you had the right to kill him first." She smiled, a sweet little killer's smile. "Thank you for being kind to my sister and my brothers, my lord. I am grateful for that. So I'll make you a promise. If you ever betray us, I'll kill you quickly. So it doesn't hurt at all."

Tyrion opened his mouth. And then closed it again. There wasn't really an answer to that, was there? She patted him lightly on the shoulder, and turned towards the door.

And then turned back, just as she reached it. One hand on the door, one hand on the hilt of her sword. She tilted her head at him, studied him with calm, easy eyes. 

"My father told us something once," she said. Offered, he thought. "He said, when winter comes, the lone wolf dies, but the pack survives. Even the weak are strong when they're together. It's not the sort of thing your father would have taught you, I think. But maybe you do have a bit of a wolf in you after all. Because it looks like it's something you learned anyway." She grinned, and tipped her head. "To bastards, cripples, and broken things, my lord."

And Tyrion laughed, and inclined his head in turn. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to be the Good Lannister after all.

"Winter is coming," he agreed. "Winter is coming. _Hear us roar_."


End file.
